goodbyes are hard (is that why we don't get one?)
by MedusaOfTheSpecies
Summary: During that dark year under Voldemort's rule, joining Dumbledore's Army is signing your own death warrant, and yet, they light the candles anyway. :: Or, The members of the DA leave things behind, in case. It's not always pretty, but it's permanent in a way so few other things are.


Written for QLFC Round 8. My prompt is: K-drama Special - For the Love of a Buzzcut. Theme - someone making preparations for their death (natural or otherwise).

Title comes from Arrow's Nyssa Al-Ghul.

 **goodbyes are hard (is that why we don't get one?)**

 **…**

 _i. Hannah Abbott_

The day before the world decays at her fingertips, Hannah sneaks out past sundown to the greenhouses.

It's exceptionally cold around Hogwarts, and Hannah veers around to see if there is a Dementor behind her, but sees only the darkness and the faint rustling of trees. It says a lot about her Hogwarts experience that it feels strange to not be followed by something or someone with nefarious intentions.

The rest of the walk passes without any sounds other than the crunching of leaves under her boots. The Carrows are long since asleep in their beds, the hour too merciless for even their hateful hearts to embrace. The rest of the DA has been hidden—for months, weeks, days—already, and the Carrows no longer waste time trying to locate them the way they used to.

Hannah slips into the greenhouse with a key Professor Sprout pretended she had never watched her swipe. Inside, the temperature is humid and comforting, like the warm nights where she and her mother slept under the night stars.

Tomorrow, Hannah knows, may be her last. There are rumours that Harry is coming home on a dragon, that Voldemort will be reduced to a memory someday, that there is still hope at the end of the tunnel.

When her mother had died, she had left no will, no letter, hadn't even seen her death approaching. Hannah had shamefully hated her a little for that until she found herself in the exact same position.

She leaves no will too. Her friends are running the same risks, her father knowing how fragile life is deep in his bones.

Tonight, however, Hannah sinks to her knees, biting her lip. Shakily she lifts her wand and begins to whisper. Around her, flowers begin to rise, vines intertwining and covering every wall.

Call it a mercy, call it a last stand, call it a war crime. Alone on the floor, Hannah takes her last stand. Hopefully, she will be back later, to watch her creations continue to bloom.

Still, if not, this is how she wants to go out, to be remembered: not with a whimper or a bang, but alone in a greenhouse in a war zone, growing life with her own magic. This will outlive her.

 **...**

 _ii. Lavender Brown_

"The mascara smudged," Parvati complains, rubbing at her lashes. "It's clumping up already."

Lavender hums in pity, tossing her best friend another mascara. Parvati inspects it, shrugging, before putting on a coat and breaking into a smile.

"Thanks, Lav, this one's great. You always have the best makeup and clothes and… just everything." Parvati chuckles. "You have good taste."

"Keep it." Lavender laughs. "And if I die, keep it all."

It's like a switch flicking on. At her words, Parvati's smile falls and her face sombers up. "Don't you dare talk about that. You aren't dying on my watch."

Lavender winces, nodding, and Parvati relaxes, but that night, Lavender grabs her diary from under a stack of magazines and slips a piece of paper in.

 _Property of Lavender Brown, for Parvati Patil._

Her parents may not support her becoming a revolutionary, and her housemates think her as a ditz, but she's more than that. In case it all goes wrong, Lavender refuses to be lost to both Parvati and history.

 **…**

 _iii. Susan Bones_

"You're crazy, you know," Zacharias tells her, frowning at the stack of photos and papers that cover the floor of the Room of Requirement in front of them.

Susan shakes her head at him. Zacharias is many things — a Hufflepuff, her friend, another foolish kid fighting the Carrows because he believes in freedom and kindness — but he is not like her.

She is the last heir to the law her aunt had died for, her parent's loving daughter, as steady and proud as her aunts, uncles, and cousins had been until their death. She is living a ghost of their last days, Voldemort's reign back in all its terror, but unlike them, she will not be caught unexpected.

In her room, a will lays completely written, but today she pulls her story together: the photographs of her murdered family, snapshots of happy Hogwarts years despite all they endured, scribbled diary entries, a moving photograph of Dumbledore's Army grinning like they have no care in the world.

"In case tomorrow isn't as kind to us as today was," she tells him and Zacharias frowns, but he does not comment anymore.

 **…**

 _iv. Anthony Goldstein_

It goes against every rule of his religion, but the days of the DA, Anthony goes all out: lights candles every day, prays as much as he can, remembers every lesson he was ever taught, prepares to die.

"Men don't light candles in Judaism," Padma tells him on Friday night, slightly accusing as she sits cross-legged on the floor. "I was reading about it."

Anthony doesn't have the heart to explain how isolating it is to be alone, to follow a long tradition of being a minority who dictators want to kill. He's a Halfblood and yet, it's not enough. People like him never are and this is his rebellion: during this dark year under Voldemort's and the Carrows' tyrannical rule, joining Dumbledore's Army is signing your own death warrant, and yet, they light the candles anyway.

"I know," he says, watching the flame flicker as Padma lights her own candle alongside his.

Just in case.

 **…**

 _v. Ginny Weasley_

One of the last things Ginny remembers from the chamber is Tom's words, choked to the brim with hatred and cruelty, nothing like the kind boy who had listened to her complaints and talked away her tears:

 _I grew stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her._

Ginny makes battle plans and contingencies, memorizes Hogwarts inside and out. She is not good at comforting the scared children who hide in the Room of Requirement with her, but she teaches them to be powerful the way she wasn't.

Her final revenge: using everything Tom taught her — his clever words, his charisma, his good looks and his ruthless when it mattered.

She'll make him regret it, and if she dies, she vows to cause as much damage to his forces as she can before she does.

It's only fair.

 **…**

 _vi. Neville Longbottom_

Later, much later, Neville will wonder how he led an army for a year without drowning under all the demands and duress.

Kill the snake, Harry will tell him at the beginning of the battle, and then Neville will understand it fully: teach the children, fight back, let yourself cry as long as you pick yourself up the next day and do it all over again. The only way you can beat a dictatorship is to be as brave as you can and make sure you don't rise up alone.

For now though, Neville kisses Hannah's cheek as they watch over the room. It feels emptier without Luna, without all the kids who fled or the missing ones who never even came to Hogwarts this year, but there are still enough baby-faced kids ready to make a change.

"What are you thinking about?" Hannah asks him quietly, and Neville just shakes his head numbly. She gets it; there are some things you cannot explain in words.

Neville tries to soak it in, tries to freeze this memory in his mind: this is what he's ready to die for.

 **…**

 _vii. Harry Potter_

Snape says, eternally hopeless and lovesick and eleven, that Dumbledore has raised him like a pig for slaughter. Snape doesn't get it: there was never any choice to make.

Harry dies for them all: for the teenagers he watched grow up and loved, for the adults who tried to save him, for the kids that he'll never get to see grow up. He's been willing to die since he was eleven, but this way, he's dying for something, for the end of evil. He's got his mother's love, an army of weary warriors at his back, a second chance at life.

Harry drops the stone and prepares to die.

 **…**

 **Written for:**

Muggle History — Muggle Wars: Task #5 Gas Mask: Write about being prepared.

Character Appreciation: 7. [Era] Trio

Disney Challenge: Courage - Write about someone managing to be courageous despite their fear.

Dark Lady's Diabolic Lair: (word) Missing

Book Club: Katherine van Leuwen: (dialogue) "Death is not the end.", (object) brick, (plot point) looking for someone, (emotion) fear, (time) sundown, (word) numbness

Showtime: Angel of Music - (emotion) Frightened

Amber's Attic: 14. "Home is any place that makes you forget the world is on fire." **(5 point bonus)**

Count Your Buttons: S1, O2, W2

Lyric Alley: There comes a time, in a short life

Ami's Audio Admirations: 9. The Murders that Follow — (theme) multiple people dying.

Em's Emporium: Urg the Unclean: write about someone inspirational

Lo's Lowdown: O1. Theme: Good vs. Evil

Bex's Basement: Alt, Write about someone being brave.

Film Festival: Genre: Friendship - Write about a group of friends


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